“I know what would be the perfect outift for us to wear when we perform our song in the school-wide airband competition: floral short-alls, and white capri tights with lace around the ankles. Then we’ll tease our bangs until they reach the sky, and we’ll be ready to win this contest!” Kristin enthusiastically explained.
“Yeah, that sounds wicked! And the song we’re doing is sooo amazing! Everyone’s just going to love it!” I hollered.
Rae piped in, “Ya! Roxette rules! We are so going to win first place…our air band is going to be so rad. Let’s keep practicing, though. Since we’re only in grade 4, we have to be extra good to beat all of the big kids.”
The ghetto blaster started pumping out the tunes, and we danced our hearts out while mouthing the words to “Joyride”. Rae was a dancer and she taught us some sweet moves; we made microphones out of old toilet paper rolls with a ball of tin foil on top; we were going to be wearing floral short-alls; we were unstoppable.
The day of the competition came, and we were pumped.
They called up our group to come and perform. As the music filled the room, and we started letting the rhythm move us, I was filled with pride. We were so cool that it almost hurt.
At least, that’s what my altered perception of reality was.
In actuality, we made complete fools of ourselves.
During the course of the song, I fell flat on my butt while trying to do this cool dance move where you lean back and touch the floor, Kristin forgot the words to the song during her solo, and Rae ripped the crotch of her shortalls when she slid into the splits for our closing pose.
We were convinced that we had nailed it, though, and were sure that we were going to win.
We did not win.
Some big, cool grade eight girls who sang “Love Shack” got first place.
We got ripped shorts and a sore butt.
I am still glad we tried, though. The song “Joyride” always takes me back to that day.
“She said, ‘Hello, you fool. I love you. C’mon join the joyriiiiiide. Join the joy-ryyyeeeed!'”
4 Comments
If it makes you feel any better- I did an incredibly embarrasing talent show air band in 5th grade. It was basically just a series of cartwheels and summersaults. The confidence we had back then!
I love how weird you are!
Is there any video of that day?……
i totally did an airband too, but it was in 5th grade. we did it to “my boyfriend’s back, and your gonna be in trouble…doowah, doowah, my boyfriend’s back” in poodle skirts and everything. we thought we were pretty hot stuff. we were up against a gr.8 air band and they only won because they won the crowd over by one guy jumping completely over another’s head. but we did get second place. i remember our team won t-shirts. do you remember the butter commercials where the butter dances with the knife and the carrot? we won butter commercial shirts. yeah, it’s dumb, but i’m still proud.
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